On Thursday my sister and I arrived home about 11:30AM. I had to get unpacked and start getting the garlic ready to plant. My helper friend would be here at noon.
He and I went out and got the tarps pulled back and then he started stacking the mulch leaves on top of the tarps. I was inside getting the garlic ready, the markers and BulbTone into buckets.
He got the first row laid out and I had garlic and everything ready for him to plant. Ideally, I would have gone out with him and mulched along behind him. But I simply was too exhausted from the last 3 or 4 days. So once he finished planting the first row, I asked him to go over to the Big garden and continue cleaning it out. Working for extended time on his knees really bothers him, and it doesn’t bother me at all. So that’s why I do the sit down/kneeling work, and he does the standing stuff.
He pulled out the zinnias, the cleome, the cosmos, and cleaned up the hollyhocks. Then he started in the large open area and started pulling out grass.
White oak and surrounding tree color
I was too tired to do all the standing needed to empty the dehydrators. They had been running since Monday night. They would just have to run until Friday morning when I could deal with them.
New South garden – pink snapdragons
My sister and I had stopped at the co-op on the way home for meals for Thursday as we were too exhausted to cook. I was so glad we did that!
Front porch shadows in late afternoon light
It was really hard, but I managed to stay awake until 8PM and went right to bed.
I was up at 5AM on Friday morning and got the dehydrators unloaded. I got two ½ gallon jars of the dried slurry.
My helper friend arrived at 8AM and we went out and started planting more garlic.
The garlic quality was much less than when I was growing my own. What I graded as “best” of the bought stuff would have been “seconds” of my own stuff.
My sister helped to peel the bulbs and grade the cloves. We had a pile of “seconds” which would have been eating garlic if it was mine. Then there was a pile of extremely thin cloves and those were marked to eat. And last, there was about ½ lb of diseased/damaged cloves.
My helper friend and I had enough of the “best” to plant 2 whole rows and 2’ of the 3rd row. Then we used the “seconds” to finish that 3rd row. Because the quality wasn’t there, we decided to plant a 4th row, just in case.
We had that about ¼ done when he had to leave. We’d completely mulched each row as we went. But when I finished the 4th row by myself, I was too exhausted to mulch it. I’d had exactly enough “seconds” to finish the 4th row.
House in afternoon sun
I finished in the garden about 1:30PM. I got a shower and some lunch and rested for a while.
My aunt had come down from Vermont to visit me and my sister and would be staying the night. We’d planned to make 
So when she arrived we visited for a while then got started making the supper. My aunt made the corn bread while my sister and I, and later my brother, worked on the chowder.
My aunt and I had toured the gardens and the house when she first got here. After supper we all made the mistake of staying up until 11:30PM sharing family histories, etc.
On Saturday morning she took us out to breakfast and we were home by 10AM. I had asked my #2 intern to come help me finish the mulching in the Small garden and she arrived about 10:30AM. We visited until 11AM and then went out and got started.
We finally finished getting the tarps down and the logs on to hold them by 1PM. Then we visited until 2PM when she had to go.
I should have mowed up leaves during the week, but… So this is what I would have to tackle on Sunday, once they had dried out.
I was again in bed right at 8PM.
All I planned to do on Sunday was mow up the leaves. They were so deep I thought it would take up to 5 hours.